Similar Games:SOS: The Great Escape, Dead to Rights II, Breakdown, Xenoblade Chronicles

“Hey, I don’t think I’ve heard of this game before.” Well, that’s because you lot in America never got it. Here’s the top reasons why you should find a way to play it.

Before we begin, I need to clear up a fact about earthquakes. When I began playing this game, something bothered me almost instantly. How could Lisa Hewitt predict that an earthquake was about to hit Blue Ridge City? So I performed a quick Google search:

Q: Can scientists predict earthquakes?

A: No. Scientists have never predicted a major earthquake. They do not know how, and they do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future. (source)

Well, don’t let facts get in the way of a good story! Disaster: Day of Crisis deliberately sets out to be the most outrageous survival-based action game yet. This is an immense challenge when you’re up against Breakdownand Disaster Report.

Burn Baby Burn

The game begins with a rather selfless sacrifice as the main character Raymond Bryce watches his friend Steve Hewitt get an early bed-time bath in pyroclastic flow. That’s lava, if you’re uneducated.

Three years pass by in the bat of an eyelid, and it is revealed that Ray quit his job as a rescue team member and took up a desk job moving papers. Something has to be seriously wrong to put up with such a massive pay cut.

Steve’s sister has been kidnapped by a terrorist group, and Ray is forced to rescue her because of a pinky promise he made with his best friend before his goose got cooked.

“How romantic. You’re going to be his valentine, Ray.”

The terrorists responsible for the kidnapping are a group of ex-marines and guerillas who go by the name of SURGE. I’m not making this up; even my imagination isn’t this faultless. Not only do they love coercing people into performing their evil deeds, they are somehow behind all the sudden earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, typhoons, lahars and everything else that you face in this game. Ray has to defeat SURGE, rescue Lisa Hewitt, and free the Lylat System once again.

Disaster has everything you would expect when it comes to Wii gimmicks. Shaking Wii Remotes, twisting Wii Remotes, stabbing Wii Remotes. In the driving scenes, you have to disconnect the nun-chuk and stick the Wii Remote up your arse.

Driving sections are easily the most impossible parts of the game. I don’t just mean in terms of whether the stunts could concievably happen, but also in terms of plain fairness. These parts caused me to swear an awful damn lot. I don’t have any curse words left for use in this review; maybe Travis could lend me some. Pottymouth.

The much more enjoyable sections of the game are those that blatantly rip off Time Crisis. Like I said with Eternal Legacy, if you’re going to copy…

Is it just me, or do you feel warm looking at this screenshot?

Experienced

Disaster has an experience and skill system, which doesn’t come as a surprise because that’s the cop-out method used by developers to lengthen their games. Everything you do from getting head shots to eating burgers found in dumpsters will give you experience, which is used to upgrade your weapons and skills.

Ray can survive multiple bullets to the face without popping his clogs. He is left with fatal injuries, but eating cookies and slapping plasters over his face is all he needs to do to recover from them. You don’t have to pay medical bills, because a simple trip to Walmart is all you need. Life-threatening wounds can be treated with sugar and splints. Who knew?

Our poor hero Ray loses stamina all of the time, doubly so whenever he performs an action. He can recover stamina by eating the spoiled food he finds inside randomly placed cardboard boxes, trash cans, and giant rocks.

Raymond Bryce, Olympian.

The stamina system and emphasis on steady breathing reminds me of Indigo Prophecy, just without the Matrix voodoo A.I. bullshit. Well, actually, there is a lot of bullshit in this game. Raymond Bryce survives getting his lungs filled with cloggy black volcanic smoke, the kind that is known to be deliciously fatal. The game becomes a fun guessing experience—how will Ray survive yet another <1% chance of survival situation?

Everything in Disaster: Day of Crisis is lunacy, plus the script, voice acting, and story are hilariously dire. The animation, models, and textures are great for the Wii, especially for a title released in 2008. You’d be a fool to miss out on this Ray of light, because no Wii collection is complete without it.

I would be all proud and smug that America never saw this title hit the shelves, but the sad fact of the matter is that I desperately want everyone to play this game.

Without circumventing your Wii System Menu in some way, you’re not going to be able to play this unfortunately. Maybe I should do a play through on GCdotNet YouTube for all those who don’t have the opportunity to play?

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